LANCASHIRE: THE FANS STUCK WITH US

Town took 1,253 fans to Forest Green Rovers and they witnessed a hard-fought 1-1 draw.

26 August 2018

swindontownfc.co.uk

Lancashire was part of a back four that had to withstand heavy pressure, not only against Forest Green, but against Crawley Town in the week too.

Town’s skipper gave credit to the fans for turning out in force and getting the team over the line.

“It almost felt like a home game – I think back to our game here last year. It was a Friday night, live on Sky and it was one of the best away games that I’ve ever played in because it was bouncing.

“You turn up at the ground this year and you get positive thoughts and I thought the fans were great today and definitely played their part – one, when we went behind and two, sticking with us at the end when we were digging in to get us home with a point.”

Lancashire echoed Phil Brown’s thoughts on the eleven on the pitch showing the character required to earn a point.

“Tuesday and today were a similar last 20 minutes where we’ve all had to stick together and put our bodies on the line – it happened Tuesday, and today as well. Hopefully, we can do that for the whole game – we’ve shown it in half an hour periods but we’re still waiting for that full-game performance.

“I think you can see from the first month or so we’ve got a lot of character to come back – we don’t want to keep going one down, two down whatever it is but it does show we’ve got a lot of team spirit and a lot of character so we always fancy ourselves to stay in the game.”

Town’s centre-half analysed the game, and concluded that a point, in the circumstances, was a good result.

“We’ll take the point. They looked at the way we’ve been playing and played a system we weren’t expecting so, fair play to the Gaffer, he changed it and I thought after that it settled things down.

“This is League Two – sometimes it’s not pretty and there’s lads out there who put their arms out, so you’ve always got to be careful and sometimes take those knocks.

“They (Forest Green) haven’t got a bottom-two budget, that’s for sure – they’re a good team, with good players and a good manager. I’d say Forest Green will definitely be in the top half at least and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them challenging higher up the top.”

Yesterday’s performance, Lancashire believes, could the beginning of a strength at the back and really dependable back line.

“Obviously, the first four-five games we’ve changed the back four every single game – it’s never easy to get that consistency to get those partnerships, especially centre-halves but left-back and right-back too.

“We caught them on the break two or three times – Keshi had a little chance at the end similar to his goal at Crawley trying to catch the keeper at his near post, but this one just went wide. You know, we’ll take this point and move on to next week.”

Finally, when quizzed on the relentless fixture list so far, the Town captain spoke of his relief to get a full recovery.

“It’s been seven games in 21 days so it’s been a hard start to the league, physically and mentally – it’ll be nice to get the rest in tomorrow and have a good, full week of training which we haven’t been able to do because of the amount of games.”